A change of opinion: audiobooks

I used to judge those who only listened to audiobooks. I know unforgivable, ablest, narrow minded, these are all things that I was, I still am, and will probably forever will be. (Not to brag, but to be honest)

As I have become older, and was checked by others, I realized this opinion is shit. So I only have really started to delve into it in the last couple of years. I was using audiobooks as a way to help me make my way through my true crime list, as way to prevent others judging me for how many books on my shelf were from this genre. And they result was: I shouldn’t be ashamed, it didn’t work since those around me were forced to hear what I was reading as opposed to speculating based off the cover and blur, and I ended up wanting to buy each book I listened to in the end anyway.

Overall, I found that replacing the time I dedicated to watching tv or listening to podcasts (while doing work or chores) could be replaced by listening to books. SO YEAH FOR MORE BOOK TIME! 

While I still dedicate a lot of my focus attention to reading a physical book or eBook, I found that I have an impressive book body count at the end of each month. 

 And in the last couple of months my journey has progressed to fiction. I am liking where I am going on this journey. So far I have found that the benefits and small joys to overcoming my prejudices have been:

1. I can see how an audiobook could be it own storytelling art form as some narrators are better matched for the story than others. Examples being the play Evil Eye by Madhuri Shekar or The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

2. I am starting to share in the amusement there is to find when using a singular narrator whose voice is noticeable “masculine”or “feminine,” and when that narrator has to then switch to the other sound for opposite gendered characters who have dialogue. Especially if there is an accent involved. Examples: Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth or Upright Women Wanted

3. I am starting to find and hone my feeling for where in the story I should give up and DNF (in fact most of my DNFs have been audiobooks). Most recently was Cook County ICU. 

4. And I am clearing out my book tbr list so quickly! As mentioned by most of the books above. Downside will be that it is now another medium that I use as an excuse to add more to my list, but still something to help check off my list.

For those who would find my old views offensive and judgmental, I am sorry. You are right. 

For those who are starting out on the path to audiobook enlightenment, welcome you made the right choice!

And for those still stuck on is this reading or not, of course it is. Anyway that you decide to consume stories (or smut) is okay. 

The best and worst book I read this year

Let me start this with something nice.

The best book I read this year was The Warmth of Other Suns. It was the most annotated of all my reads, you would think I was trying to memorize the book in it’s entirety. It is well written and has the flow of a novel, even when considering this is a nonfiction piece meant to cover The Great Migration. The writer is so talented in her ability to portray the humanity and the life in the voices that she uplifted through the white noise that is American history. It made me feel so emotional, it taught me so much about American history and the black experience after the end of slavery and the fight for any semblance of equality that people are striving so hard for. This book puts into perspective so many other books, tv shows, movies, articles, conversations, and other facets of life that I encounter.

The worst book I read this year felt like it had a lot it wanted to say and could not get there. It was the antithesis of the praise I have for my best read. Maybe I would have enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow if I hadn’t read this and all the other novels and nonfictions pieces that wormed their way into my thoughts in a more pleasing manner.

On the surface I should have enjoyed it, it tries to cover serious topics, it has an appealing cover and was recommended by a friend, it is long fiction piece of contemporary work that tries to bring a literary light to one of my passions - video games.  

It just wasn’t good. This is the first book I have read that was written by the author and it was enough of a trip where I am hesitant to give her another try. If I had to say anything good it was that I at least hated it so much that I rage read it all the way through hoping to find that redeemable quality that would change my bias. I didn’t.

Look I like a wordy writer, I am an Anne Rice fan. I read the unabridged versions of Stephen King books, and fucking was here for the Trashcan Man chapters and sections within The Stand. I do not feel comfortable shitting on another writer’s technique because I would hate for others to do that to me. But damn if this book didn’t make me think that she should have a hard-ass editor. A lot of the book was not needed. It was a drag. Entire chapters, characters, subplots, commentary, sections, and words within the sentences should have been cut.

It was not ground breaking. It did not give good commentary on what she thought she was doing (race, the me too movement, homosexuality, sexism, disabilities, depression, the current video game industry, heteronormative standards, how art and games are political). She inserts too many things and does not delve into it deeply enough.

Even though she is Jewish and Korean, her attempts to discuss appropriation, racism, and the unfair burden women have in partnerships comes off as maybe even more harmful than good. This isn’t a book that holds a mirror to current society to show us what we are looking past. Nor does it seem like it is a novel trying to visualize how these characters could take these problems with their current society and create a space for themselves. It left me wondering, why was it even written if not to be some type of wank writing exercise. I feel she might have known this too? Towards the end there is a section where her characters start to “Skip” the dialogue in the game and I could think was, “You are fucking with us. Even you want to skip through to your shitty end.”

Not to spoil it, but this was the more timid A Little Life: bougie friends whose center is someone else’s unimaginable trauma and identity, the tone of which is that you should pity these highly intelligent characters because they have emotional and physical disabilities that they suffer through life. As someone who has been privileged enough to not yet have a serious illness or accident, maybe I don’t know what I am talking about, but it comes across as condescending and ablest. 

Around the same part of the book, the author then takes out the happiness in an abrupt and startling way, just so she could say don’t forget America has a gun problem. But here is where I think this is due to bad writing. A Little Life is torture porn and a fantasy of rich but sad group of people in New York, it was engrossing even if it was at the expense of it characters, and in the end you know who the villains are. I then read her other book that was very similar in tone, The People in the Trees.Very similar in graphic abuse of young characters, but clearly a unreliable narrator in the style of Humbert Humbert. What I like about it more is that she is a talented writer, it was clear she was trying to talk about anthropologists - their abuse in the people and the lands. It matched up to what I had learned about how Yanomami and the monsters that came into their midst (Jacques Lizot). Are they hard books to read, yes. Are they controversial because of the abuse the characters face, yes. But I cannot apply that same energy to Gabrielle Zevin's novel, because Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow doesn’t even have that.

Finally, I have been unable to find direct sources that talk about the author’s opinion on the current events in Palestine, but from her writing I can’t imagine it would be good. There is a line in which a douche bag teacher who has started a relationship with his young student is lecturing her about not knowing about Israel (since she is a young American Jewish woman). I want to know what she is trying to say, especially because if any statement is clear from her book - it is that she seems to believe that creating something is political. I have a feeling that it will not be an opinion that I would respect, and one that focuses on hers and her families personal history while ignoring that racism and discrimination is not novel to one group of people. If I am wrong, and she does come out acknowledging that the Israeli state is as the expense of the Palestinians that are being displaced and killed in this long standing genocidal campaign against them, good for her because that is what I want to hear and I apologize for assuming otherwise. Maybe then I will give her another go.  

Most of what I read in November

Was good because it was written by diverse and BIPOC authors, or by an author that at least attempted to add clarity to the many issues we are facing today. I am trying to highlight this because while it was a fulfilling month reading wise, when it comes to writing: I myself, did not do shit. 

I fall into the trap each year thinking that I will partake in the goal of writing a book in November. It is in my opinion (probably due to my constant failure at the goal) that it can be hard for those to make the time if they are also in a stage in life where their family and work obligations are full time, it is unrealistic to expect people to be able to power through a novel. 

I mean I feel like I can’t find the time now, why do I think that I am going to get into a steady and completing habit of writing during the holiday months? I am being forced to leave the house for hours at a time once a week at this point, how can I recoup from that!?

At least I can counter my shame and self reflection on my writing goals, with my pride and intense reflection after nailing my reading goals. 

Pachinko - This Dickensian novel is an engrossing multi-generational tale that drew me in and convinced me that I could tackle some of the more denser reads that I would later pick up. I was able to learn more about how the Korean people struggled under annexation by following this fictional family centered around Sunja. 

I still haven’t watch the drama, mostly because I am struggling to stay up to date on the Real Housewives shows right now. I can accept that I am one of the sheeple who is running with the masses - about how the Golden Age of TV is done, while not putting in effort to stream anything. 

This novel is written by a journalist and it shows: from how the narrative is laid out, to the attention to details when describing the scene and living arrangements available to the characters, and from the interactions the characters have within their society. It is meant to humanize people in a time in which their plight was being ignored.

Never Whistle at Night - This is marketed as a dark fantasy anthology from Indigenous writers. I have been into this since I heard it was coming out, tried to avoid buying any new books, and then used Native American History Month in not a completely horrible way (even though it was my excuse) to buy the book. I tend to say that I am not into stories, but I guess I am not yet skilled at writing short stories myself. The people who can deserved, to be read. And this group of writers deserve to be read. 

I feel overall there is more of a horror tone to the stories, but they range in sadness and triumph and metaphor and reality. It is also, a most excellent cheat sheet for which other works by these writers I should be reading. 

“Limbs” was the most terrifying.

“Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning,” the most sad.

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World  - This felt like a life changing memoir, not just for the man who lived the life and had the skill to tell it so well, but for me as a reader. I did not realize what he and others like him had to go through as an older queer black nerd, nor that the beauty he found in the natural world was one that would be so inevitable and compelling. The growth and strength in voicing what we should all know to be morally right or wrong, is what I am expecting off everyone, even the vapid pop culture stars on their successful redemptive tours (and even while knowing it is wrong to expect so much given the differences in circumstances, character, and determination). 

This is an amazing memoir that I plan to gift everyone in my life who might have a passing fancy to one of the many fancies this eloquent nature nerd has to offer. 

But also it is funny, it really is.

The Warmth of Other Suns - This book has been on my to buy list for a while, then on my to read shelf for a month or two, before I gave it the time it deserved and I needed. It took me a full two weeks to read, I was underlining and taking notes nonstop, feeling my mind and heart open. While the author focuses on three different archetypes during the Great Migration, with her research in those individual lives, and the lives of so many others, she comes off with a true Dickensian telling that should be required reading for all college students. 

This book is full of voices and does not shy away from the unspoken horror that America does not like to recall in its historical texts. This is a reminder, but also a conscious effort, to document a time period that is not to far removed from where we are now. There are still millions of Americans who can recall what they or their family had to go through when desegregation was ended in the South.

I feel pretty confident in saying that this may be my favorite book of the year. I hope that I will be able to read this several times before I kick it, I have a feeling it will be the book that rave about for years (until the next mind blowing text comes along).

Okay but back to the writing goal. I did write something, even if I did not accomplish what I set out to do. I made notes for new ideas. I trudged through one that I can’t work out of my head or out on the paper. I have a feeling that if I gave myself time, I could work through my frustration, complete it, and feel some sense of relief to be rid of it. But what do I know, except the lies I am willing to tell myself?

What's this, an old journal entry/review on a 2015 Kraftwerk concert? (Yes it is and yes it ends abruptly)

I am not a die hard fan of Kraftwerk. I do not own any albums nor have I downloaded any of their tracks. Living with a boyfriend who is a DJ does not allow me to be ignorant of them. One of his endearing traits of being in love is when the other person goes on at length with their encyclopedic knowledge on subject, so I have been learning the ins and outs of certain subjects that I would have never sought out on my own. Just as Zach will be happy and willing to pay an exorbitant amount to see my dream act perform (Cher), I was down for seeing his dream show: Kraftwerk. So going into this I am not a die hard fan of Kraftwerk, but I can still enjoy them.

The notorious seclusion aspect of their personalities makes sense with the music and the performance that they put on. Besides being pioneers in electronic music, they are just plain wise. The show was well thought out on several levels and was worth the chance to see it. What they make is interesting, but is not exciting visually. The sounds they use are simple and repetitive, but it is not boring. There are paradoxes to making electronic music, and they have been doing it for so long that they are wise to the process. Any point of the show or the albums could be dissected and pondered upon for far longer than what I will devout to it.

Shit was sold out and no one wasted a ticket for every seat was filled. In the darkness every so often people would move about the rows requiring more beer for whatever fucked up journey they were living through. Even with the pulling back as some squirmed past, only to come back to squish by you, I did not curse the person for breaking my concentration. Though I broke eye sight with the screen, the music was already telling the story. All the visuals were either pulled from music videos are specific to the songs message. As a 3D performance, not everything was nauseatingly whooshing towards your face. The effects were used more subtle than that. It was used to emphasis letters and words within the songs. It was used to help visualize themes and draw you into the repetitive enticing rhythms.

I am sure that if you have a predilection to hallucinogens or mood alerting drugs, that Kraftwerk is the best way to enhance the experience. As a sober person, the effects and knowing that a couple thousand people were having the same type of awed experience was enough to let me loose myself a couple of times. And yes during Autobahn I had issues trying to stay awake, the soothing expense of early graphics computer animated VW Beetle overtaking a Mercedes and the lilting melody of the track was knocking me out. I had to keep on trying to wake myself knowing, that soon another song will play and I will be energized, and I did not want to miss out on it because I was sleeping. Digression over, the point is Kraftwerk must be aware of the drug culture in the electronic scene and how laser shows go hand in hand with music and shrooms. This is less psychedelic and spiritual and more scientific and spatial. To have a show is important and part of the reason why they can play so few shows and still sell out. It makes the experience more special for the rarity and does not dull the senses to the experience. It also entertains while they make music, for DJing is not a performance. Everything else that surrounds it is, but not the the music makers themselves, they are just boring robots.

But to see a robot on screen, that is far more entertaining. To see a 3D computer rendition line drawing of them, clicking buttons while not moving, is far more entertaining than the men up there doing just that. They are brilliant for playing within contexts and experimenting with what an audience will enjoy and what they can say before they no longer enjoy it.

Playing in Austin, Texas, they are very European and a world apart from our mentality. Their references and songs are very strange to what I hear everyday ( I know of it, I just rarely have to think on those terms) old models who wore the clothes for the patrons, Tour de France, and Autobahn. The politics were there, just restrained in its performance. Referring to the radioactive disgraces within its native language in respect to the tragedies.

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears and Paris by Paris Hilton

Given some time to mull over The Woman in Me and Paris memoirs, I have some thoughts.

In general, I do not like to give reviews or opinions on memoirs, even if it is some major bullshit - what right do I have to call someone out on their lies. If anything, their lack of self awareness and the delusion it takes to write (or get a ghost writer to write) that down is not my battle to fight. I feel it is asking more of someone that they have to be willing to give, and as a reader and consumer if we do that then we are crossing into parasocial relationship territory.

I do feel that both stories were very aware of how they wanted to spin that they were wronged. We (society and the media) have gone back and forth with hatred and admiration in a way that is unfair. Paris Hilton’s and Britney Spear’s stories are very focused on their experience and how we were unaware of the circumstances and how we added to their victimization. I think they have every right to tell it, I believe what they wrote, and I enjoyed it and learned more about them as complex women and not characters. Yet it has to be said, the worst thing about the stories is that it is very white and privileged, they have yet to take the next leap to making sure other women (who are not white or rich) deserve better and they may be downplaying how substance abuse can be a result of their trauma.

While The Woman in Me is more unaware of maybe how alcohol and drug use negatively impacted her life, Paris Hilton does gives us a little more into how she is aware - only to pull back. The Woman in Me is more of a puff piece then I would like, which makes sense since Britney does not have the distance and time to reflect.

Paris has had more time, and while she does as the book goes on allude to her real fuckups that should be more closely examined (claims of racist slurs used, sexists slurs used, indifference to others) it is not fully there. I am not expecting her to be treated like Cersei made to walk with her shame, that is monstrous. When Paris Hilton does attempt remorse, the steps she starts are still admirable even if they fall short.

It is just that when Paris was talking about the bill she was working on, she is so antipolitics that she refuses to acknowledge parties. Even if her opinion is that they are all the same at this point, cause they are, this statement would given her more grace. But then she makes sure to drive home that the bill needs to speak to the wealthy individuals who are sending their kids to the camp, because they are the ones funding it. But she does not realize the irony that it could be at the exclusion of the foster children and children on state benefits who do find themselves in those and other similar hell holes, because there are not proper social resources and they have are making the largest group of undesirable others that society is trying to crush.

I guess with her activism, and other stars we idolize, it can’t be because they finally experienced something and now get it. It should be because, “ Oh shit if it could happen to me, what will happen to someone else in even worse circumstances?”

Love the name drops in both, and to be honest Paris does give more in her book that Britney does. But be aware she keeps trying to make sliving happen and it is definitely a way for her to plug all her past and current crap she is trying to sell. Paris brings up NFTs so many times that all it does is convince me that like BitCoin it is the scam of the future. I am going to keep my recession impacted dollar bills in my mattress thank you for very much. (Only to pull them out to buy Britney Spear’s Curious at Wal-Mart, it is the only celebrity perfume I have bought multiple times and makes me smell like the pop star tart I really wish I was.)

The Book of Etta and The Book of Flora by Meg Elison

I love the push for more diverse writers in modern publishing. While I have always thought I was a diverse reader, what I am exposed to is limited to what publishers think will appease to a mass audience. I have been reading more science fiction and literary fiction from women and BIPOC authors, because there are more and more publishers giving chances to none white male authors. 

And I love it.

Through her series Meg Elison does something that I wished for with a recent trilogy I read (Wool, Shift, and Dust), she gives voice to not just hetero women but also to queer and trans people. Which given the story she is telling seems to be a given, but is really a testimony to how good Meg Elison was with creating this dystopian world.

The Book of Etta is the second in the series stared with The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. A devastating flu kills most of the population, but especially women and female children. With societies collapsed, it focuses on the wasteland that is now America and how women and children are treated. The first book covers the initial events and foretells what to except. The Book of Etta picks up with one of the secret women cities/societies and what it means to be a queer woman (and maybe be even a trans man) in a society where reproducing and being a women is sacred if not a curse.

The entire series is graphic, but not in a way to re-traumatize readers, just to be realistic to why people are acting they way they are. The first book was so depressing that I had to sit on it for a year before I moved on. It is very much in tone like The Road. It is clearly a discussion of women’s rights and how quick the right we have is taken away in dire circumstances. There is no other way to convey the fear and urgency without including the different type of abuse the characters within the story face. 

As we move onto The Book of Flora, knowing the story was going to end and having immersed myself in the first two novels, I think most readers can see the reveal at the end. This book is important because it is filled with the guilt and turmoil of the trans experience. While I cannot say I know what that must be like, I can appreciate how she imagines it and tries to tell a story that is outside of her norm. It gave me the opportunity to contemplate what queer people may face in the remnants of a broken down society that didn’t accept them in the best of times. I also learned shit. This series had me googling something with each one and being very mind blown emoji about it.

A short review, that is vague because I do not want to spoil it. This is all to say, this series is worth it and one of the few apocalyptic books that depends on reality and science (and not magic or religion) to tell a dark story that wraps up with an ending that is neither bitter or to impossibly beautiful and perfect. 

The Living Blood by Tananarive Due

I am in some type of mood where the second book of the series seems to be hitting the spot. Maybe this is a new phase of my life, or just a coincidence. Since this book series is about supernatural events of course I am quick to declare not a coincidence - totally a sign of something!

The Living Blood is the second book in a series by Tananarive Due that was started in the 90s. My husband, who is not a reader, clocked this when I mentioned that the main male character so far has been described to look like Blair Underwood (so much so that he was tied to the movie adaptation and referenced in the book itself). 

The other way the time period is noted is that Tananarive Due does not limit herself to one genre when telling her story. It is clear that this is an epic thriller that is cross continental, and while it may be fantasy with some science fiction, it is also a way for the writer to tell a scary story via a black woman’s perspective. Even before the events that kick off the black lives moment, she took the horror of the civil rights movement to write some of the most terrifying torture scenes that I have read in a long time.

I have seen her and this series compared to Anne Rice, and I have also seen that Stephen King has given his quote/seal of approval for her writing. I kinda see the Stephen King endorsement as more fitting. This story is scary in the way that pet cemetery is scary. What would a parent do to save their child’s life? 

It is a “vampire novel” that takes place in South Africa and Ethiopia, all over the African continent in a way most white horror novels take place in Europe. It was written by a black woman and it is not the tired plot (though I do love it) of a talented young thing being selected by a hot vampire for intense sex the rest of their live. There is substance and this story is original enough that I could see it being a point of reference for writers the way that Anne Rice is. But I still insist that her writing is more like Stephen King, just the right amount of description and tons of fast moving action in comparison.

Without giving away too much: Jessica is a black American woman who comes from a strong family and has support after the devastating events that proceed this in the first book: My Soul to Take. Traumatized, changed by those events, and after learning that her husband was hundreds of years old by means of secret brotherhood of Ethiopian immortals, Jessica must start to find a new normal. At the same time, a father in America whose son is dying of leukemia, is chasing a magical cure whatever the cost. 

The appeal of horror novels is that it can scare you on so many levels, superficially and with its deeper meanings.

This book imagines what healing blood would mean to a good but also naive black woman who has suffered personal loss. She would want to save as many children as possible from preventable deaths. It makes me think how few books imagine a world without illness, cancer, or AIDS. I think that is the real taboo, and imagining a cure for some specific illness can be trite. It is easier for writers to imagine characters dying from a made up disease than to imagine a world where we could do something about AIDS and how that would look like. Reality is easy and dreams can seem so lofty and childish. This book embraces the naivety of the main character Jessica and helps drives the plot and actions. It works. 

I would say the trigger warning is that this book is about reality - the fear of losing a child and the physical acts of racism that cannot be escaped. Most of the main and supporting characters are black, wealthy, educated, strong people, needed in their communities, and there is a range in appearance (some lighter than others). Removed of its fantastical elements, this could still be a news story of how Dr. Lucas Shepherd was treated during a protest or how Sarah was found as a passenger in a car during a run in with cops. There is torture, but this is the reality within Tananarive Due’s writing, making this book feel close to a place we inhabit today.

Anyway I loved it, I want to read the rest. I want to read all her other books. I am now a huge fan.

Everything horror that I read in October

Maybe it was the season, the cumulation of depressing current events, or I am just in that way - but I felt as everything I read could have been horror related in October. To try to group this flimsy observation into a single post, I would like to pick apart my recent reads til I find the tiniest example that could be used to bolster that opinion.

Yellowface was the first real ghost story that I read in October. It was a good stepping stone for how I would end my month, more humor than dark it is a clear example of satire. I think if you are a writer then the scariest part of the book is to realize you could be any of the shitty characters, this is a tale about the publishing industry, our current response to social media disasters, and how racism can still make bank. At times I was convinced that it would turn into a modern American horror classic to be revered like Poe or Jackson, but it is so much more. 

I am not trying to buy anymore books, so I of course bought several more. I have picked up Babel so I can read more from R.F. Kuang. With each book that I finished recently, I was very tempted to pick this up, but it is fine to languish on my tbr shelf a little longer.

I listened to the audiobook version of Minor Detail. It is a fictional story based on real events, of a young Palestinian bedouin girl who was raped by the Israelis during the taking of Palestine in the 1940s. This novella is unsettling in how the author takes you there and is a ghost story of sorts as well. Horrific for the truth and how current events proves the fictional portion was not an exaggeration but a prediction based on observations. 

These next two were mothers day gifts from my husband, he swooped up a themed table at Book People and we were clueless to the mother horror journey I was about to embark. I appreciate the gifts but they may be too close to reality when it comes to female writers articulating the common horror shared among women when it comes to families, trauma, and motherhood.

Motherthing introduced a science term I had heard but never conceptualized until it was used to show the extremes the main character Abby goes to find the comfort she deserved as a child. With a dirtbag mom, but a funny and loving husband Ralph, Abby is primed to be the best daughter in law. Too bad Laura has her own shit and makes her depression a curse they must now live through. Domestic horror with a lot of taboo and jarring scenes, it is hard to know if the ending is happy or even resolved. Happy Mothers days indeed.

Just Like Mother is a surreal take on our current time or world or reality, however you want to see it. Taken separately - the different sensationalist elements that make up the story (for example a motherhood cult lead by killer women, a young woman with a deranged past reconnecting with her cousin after all these years, a series of unfortunate events that could not possibly be related but so clearly are to everyone else…) could be pulled from fucked up headlines and stories out there. This book had me thinking “don’t do that, don’t trust her Maeve, why are you going back there,” but still I read on and was traumatized.

I read the second in a series I started last year, it wasn’t until The Living Blood that I understood the beauty of the series. This novel is one that could be hard to describe because it can be classified under several genres. Overall, the tone to me was classic thriller and horror. This series based on immortals has so far followed Jessica, a successful journalist with a big heart for social justice and family, as she learns her husband and children are not what she thought. This book does have violence and should be avoided by anyone grossed out by the concept of blood.

I like V.E. Scwhab. I think as a writer, the stories and the technique are amazing and well written but I just like it. I worry that I almost border on feel apathy to what I am reading. Gallant is a hard word for me to say and most least favorite of the books by this author that I have read. It does fit the tone as it is a haunted house story similar to Motherthing, this is about family and curses and ghosts that call us back home. And yet, eh. And also, a well written ghost tale.

Carmilla is the most tasty of all the reads. I was skeptical about its history, a vampire story that predates Dracula? A novella written in the 1800s that is about tantalizing lesbians? It is all those things, a classic horror read that I am ashamed I did not know about sooner.

My final read that scared the shit out of me was another second in the series The Book of Etta. This series about an illness that wipes out most of the population leaving few survivors and even fewer women is disturbing in the ways you can imagine. The first book is so hard to read, it is not a surprise to me that I had to wait awhile to brave the second one. Even though it is full of despair and misunderstandings, the fact that a woman writer gave voice to this nightmare and also did not ignore how much of an impact this would have on all identities and genders makes this second story one that I am glad I attempted to read. The darkest of all the books, somehow seems to me the one that had more hope in the end.

So far The Book of Flora has been crushing that.

A month that felt like nonstop dread and I was grateful that I had the chance to read all the words that I did.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

My latest obsession is trying to be like the cool kids by talking about books on TikTok since the majority of my interactions is with a toddler. I need to be part of a community that is older and not so tyrannical and demanding. Also I want it to be able to speak and write and think. 

I am picking the lingo up. I am getting hip with it, and one of the terms I am swilling around in contemplation is mood reader. Is that how I go about life? I used to think I was like Matilda but what if my self diagnosis is inaccurate and ignoring a real phenomena out there that I am a part of? 

I think that after reading How the García Girls Lost Their Accents I realized that mood reader is a more apt term for how I move from book to book. Although it is known for being the first novel of Julia Alvarez, I only just “discovered” her writings last year and read out of sequence - I read the sequel to this novel first. As clueless as I am/was, I enjoyed that and this first story concerning a family of mostly girls escaping a political regime intent on stamping out their father and his views in the Dominican Republic. I learned something while exposing myself to a talented writer of domestic fiction.

Although I started out of order, it does not seem that absurd since her writing has a flow. Even when revealing the characters and their setting, it leads the reader to a growing sense of familiarity. Her first novel makes uses of going backwards to tell the journey this family makes when they immigrate to the United States. So reading the novel Yo first, about one of the older girls the fictional writer and poet Yolanda García, matches the method Julia Alvarez deploys in her first novel.

Going forwards, backwards, or jumping around in time, it is not a decision meant to mask the writer’s inadequacies, Julia Alvarez is a gifted storyteller. Her narrative style seems effortless and cinematic, when I read her words I have the ability to envision the places and the people, their movements through the pages. Altogether you can see the story she is trying to capture about this family. Yet if each chapter was taken as an individual read, they would come off as a full short story. Both novels tell a cohesive story even if they jump from perspective to different moments in time. 

These are for the most part, entertaining tales of one family - their legends and defining events that make up their collective history . Each person is flawed, brilliant, fucked up, strong, perpetrator of an -ism, and victim of an -ism. Alvarez is able to say a lot through this family and you can see the commentary she is making even in class, race, beauty, xenophobia, and sexism. 

I made a note of page 197 in my copy, since the section about the father and the annoying dad jokes/games he would play felt so tangible even if this was never my experience. It helps to show the complexity of their interactions when it comes to the retelling of his actions and reactions with his daughters. I also made a note of the saddest story, the chapter that was about Carla’s American surprise. This clear example of classism in the Dominican Republic, like the dad joke scene, are paragraph long novellas of scenes we should all be close to since they are not too unique to life and thus so believable.

There are trigger warnings, this book covers a range of traumas that they have survived: minor and major, of their own making and not. But the overall tone is not one of despair so much as this is the life they are living. I love this work for the writer and the stories that she tells, for being able to write about the different lives from the Dominican so that way people like me can have a peek. I recommend you read it and also embrace whatever method you have to picking your reads.

Scythe, The Thunderhead, and The Toll by Neal Shusterman

I try to jot down notes throughout my reads on my phone, this is a new habit I am building as a mother and an aging person born in the nineteen hundreds. I was used to scribbling aggressively in cursive when a thought came to me, because back then I was able to stop what I was doing in order to transcribe my thoughts. But then I had a family. 

And also there was that one time I tried to write for a local blog and the much younger tech bro who was recruiting my free and desperate labor was like “Whoa pen and paper!” when I pulled out of my journal from my bag several years ago. I still have many journals and always carry my current one on me, I just hide it in my outdated carpet bag of shame, only those who know me best are aware of my lame habit (so you).

If this combined review for all three books seems disjointed - the above paragraphs are my attempt to explain that. I read all three within a couple of weeks, but also with other novels in between. Overall, I enjoyed them all and am regretting ignoring this recommendation for as long as I did. (Which is to say was at least a couple of years.)

Initial impression is that this is novel about a fucked up dystopian future society in which we have conquered death and have not been conquered by an all knowing AI. Two teens, male and female, are selected in an unusual apprenticeship to become one of the Scythes responsible for keeping the population within manageable means. You follow their journey and are introduce to a potential future - if aging and death were working the way we would want it to - within our control.

 In most trilogies the first book pulls you in, but fizzles out on the story and momentum as it moves on. It gets trapped in trying to get back to the same incredulous setup that was the premise of the first book, even if the characters had spent the entire first book escaping from said hellscape. This series does not fall into that trap.

As a series, it does a good job of setting up the events, how such an unbelievable premise would work, and integrating serious plots and motivations for the characters. All three books work, make sense, and overtime let you in on the scene. I would get lost in the worlds.

Even when I think I know where it is going, there is still a surprise to the set up and use of popular tropes seen in this genre by use of deflection and sleight of hand. This is a new world and future from a talented writer, Neal Shusterman can answer questions about how this works, while keeping the story moving along with his action sequences very well. 

The writing is built on conversations and following different characters POV, leading to this being a quick read. But do not be mistaken, the execution is astounding and come from an amazing imagination. It starts off dystopian but is a science fiction novel at heart. Speaks of AI, where technology could lead us potential, ethics, how power and people will always be corrupt no matter the utopia presented. It speaks to racism, borders, gender binaries, biases, religion, politics, and institutions. 

It is a good series because I feel it is optimistically realistic, for the most part. Which is a weird thing to say since it is about death, ethics and morality, amongst other serious and complex subjects. Plus when the death gets going in some of the books it gets going and is final. There is not a complete happy ending, but there is closure.

For readers who are willing to give young adult books a chance, this is the style book that you will be able to love and recognize for what it is. I believe this is one of those situations in which because the main characters are young adults, this is why it is grouped in science fiction and marketed to teens. This is not just a young adult novel, do let that limit you from reading it.

So in summation, one of my favorite young adult series in a long time. I loved and love it and think you might as well.